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The 15 Worst Championship Rings Of All Time

Over the last month or so I’ve looked at a lot of really amazing championship rings. And while it’s been fun looking at the best the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB have to offer, I’m ready for something different. So today I’m doing a list of the 15 worst championship rings of all time.

Now, you’ll notice that the rings on this list are all from the big four North American sports leagues, and the reason for this is simple. We didn’t include rings from other leagues is because (A) nobody would care and (B) there would almost certainly be too many bad rings to choose from. Maybe one day we’ll do a list of awesome and/or awful championship rings from the Arena Football League or the WNBA, but for now we’ll pass.

Anyway, with further ado, let’s look at some really stupid championship rings.

15. San Francisco Giants 2010 World Series Ring

This one was close. It’s not exactly awful, but it isn’t good, either. I like the Golden Gate Bridge on the side (made out of gold, no less), but I’m not a fan of the two-tones of gold in the absence of any other color. Maybe the Giants made them disappointing on purpose, though, so the team would be extra motivated to win another championship and get a better-looking ring.

14. Los Angeles Lakers 2009 NBA Championship Ring

This ring is just a miss rather than a masterpiece of awfulness. Now, the Laker’s 2010 NBA Championship ring? That is bad. You’re going to want to stay tuned for that. It’s coming up.

13. St. Louis Rams 2000 Super Bowl Ring

Boring. This is a team with an absolutely terrific primary logo—the blue and gold rams horns—and yet they put their lame secondary logo on the Super Bowl ring? Really? Could you imagine how awesome this would be if that diamond Lombardi trophy were superimposed over rams horns made out of blue and yellow jewels instead? It would have been epic.

12. New York Giants 1991 Super Bowl Ring

I shouldn’t let the Giants’ 1991 SB ring take all the heat for this stupid design. Lots of rings from all the big leagues did this. Since they had a single diamond in the center when they won their first championship, they put two diamonds in the center when they won their second. The problem, of course, is that it looks dumb. And in the case of this particular ring celebrating New York’s Super Bowl XXV, the center of the ring looks like the head of an alien. Oops.

11. Washington Red Skins 1988 Super Bowl Ring

What can I say? This one is just ugly. All the elements of the design—the Lombardi trophies, the football, the Red Skin red rubies—are isolated, occupying different parts of the ring. It looks like the dinner plate of an anal-retentive guy who won’t let any of his food touch.

10. Chicago Bulls 1992 NBA Championship Ring

The Bulls had some awesome championship rings in ’93, ’97, and ’98, but this one from ’92 is just turrible, as Charles Barkley would say. It looks like a belt buckle designed by some dude who owns a cocktail lounge out by the airport.

9. Pittsburgh Steelers 2009 Super Bowl Ring

Eagle-eyed readers might notice that this particular ring also appears in our list of best Super Bowl rings. Well, I want to know that this isn’t an oversight. As I said there, on the list of the best rings, this one is so awful it’s amazing. The only thing that makes the ugliness good is the fact that it’s so over-the-top. But the thing is, you just can’t ignore the ugly, either. So in the end I was torn, and I felt the only way to dual nature of this ring is to put in on the list of best and worst rings. After all, whether you love it or hate it just kind of depends on the mood you’re in on any given day.

8. Baltimore Ravens 2001 Super Bowl Ring

This one might have been okay if not for one fatal flaw: those prison bar-like stripes behind the Raven logo. I mean, is that some kind of statement? Like, “you can’t keep us behind bars”? (You may recall that there was a little Super Bowl scandal back in 2001 surrounding Ray Lewis’ conviction for obstruction of justice in a murder case. Some people thought he should be in prison rather than winning the MVP award at the Super Bowl.) In any case, this ring is just ugly.

7. Cincinnati Reds 1976 World Series Ring

I like how this ring features the Commissioner’s Trophy on the front. But all the words on the side just make this thing way to busy. I actually get a little motion sickness just from looking at it. It may look better in person, though. The next time you see Pete Rose signing memorabilia at a Vegas strip mall, ask him if you can see it.

6. Philadelphia Athletics 1929 World Series Ring

Okay, so it was 1929, and everyone was depressed. You have to give people in the olden days some slack. But other rings from this era weren’t this ugly. In fact, if you look at our list of the best World Series rings, some of the rings from this era were fantastic. This would look fantastic on the Maharaja. It looks dumb on a world champion ballplayer.

5. Anaheim Ducks 2007 Stanley Cup Ring

Look, Anaheim, if you’re so embarrassed to be called the Ducks that you won’t even include a freaking duck anyone in your logos or uniforms, maybe you should just change your f@$#ing team name already. But for the love of God, get rid of this stupid flying D logo. It’s terrible, and it ruined your Stanley Cup Championship ring. (Well, that, and the overall poor design.)

4. Montreal Canadiens 1969 Stanley Cup Ring

WTF? Is this ring also a bottle opener or something?

3. Cleveland Indians 1948 World Series Ring

This ring commemorating the Cleveland Indians’ 1948 World Series victory is so utterly terrible, Major League Baseball has not let them win another one since. I mean, the design is basically a diamond with a curtain hanging from it. (When you say it out loud the concept sounds even stupider than it looks.)

2. Los Angeles Lakers 2010 NBA Championship Ring

Man, when I first saw this ring I didn’t think it was the real thing. I thought it was a joke. It just does not look like a piece of jewelry a grown non-cross-dressing human male would agree to wear.

1. Arizona Diamondbacks 2001 World Series Ring

Here’s the thing. I’ve been harping on for weeks now about how, most of the time, a really good championship ring will have the team’s logo on the top made out of diamonds or gold or some other awesome material. It’s not an absolute rule, but if you do this it’s hard to go wrong.

It’s hard to go wrong, that is, unless you are the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks, and you have one of the worst logos in the history of Major League Baseball. In that case, you do not want your logo on the front of your championship ring. Especially if the rest of the design is stupid, too.

If you didn’t know any better, by looking at this ring you might think at a Triple-A Championship ring.